I get similar problem with black screen, but not the exact same conditions.
I get a partial desktop GUI where the menu is blank and desktop icons are missing or partially there.
Seems to be caused by graphics driver being used.
My Nvidia hardware does not like the nouveau driver.
If I use the Vesa driver or use the boot option nouveau.modeset=0 , all problems are fixed and I get a normal desktop and menu._________________I have found, in trying to help people, that the things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected

I happened to have one "mostly black screen" Pup in a frugal
install on a old IBM NetVista. The Pup is Racy 5.3.90 The video
hardware is Intel and Racy is set for 1280 X 1024 The cpu is
a p4 2.0ghz and RAM is 512 meg.

I tried modifying both sleep settings in the .initrc from 0.5 to
various values from 0.1 to 6.0 None of the settings fixed the
problem. I verified that the ,initrc file was indeed modified by
checking it after each reboot. I could tell when the sleep was
set to a high value since the startup screen remained totally
black (except for cursor) for a seemingly long time before a gui
(or toolbar at least) appeared.

I may have to d/l Precise PAE again (dunno if I still have it
anywhere) to test it in particular. Meanwhile I do have Slacko
5.4 handy on a CD so I'll try it next.

BTW, thanks for your pursuit of and work on a wonderful idea.
Puppy Linux really rocks!

Just to add more detail for my particular problems with black screens and recent Pups (PAE and now the very latest 4G slacko):

No problem booting with the problem Pups - but after a few minutes, I get a totally black screen (no task bars) with no possible recovery (Ctrl+Alt+Bkspace does nothing) so I have to do a re-set. Computer does not freeze, just the display - happened once while Pburning a CD but I could finish the burn by hitting <Enter> by listening to when sr0 had stopped writing.

Graphics card is a Radeon HD5450 in a desktop. I recall once trying the proprietary ATI driver which also black-screened, but it's the default radeon driver that is in use when I get these black screens.

Full and Frugals both black screen - I have lately tried fewer Fulls as now if the Frugal doesn't behave itself, I don't bother with the longer install & setting up of a matching Full.

No pattern I can see when the black screen happens with regard to the running program - but I can't recall it failing when I haven't been doing something on the computer, that is, leaving it running with no input may be OK. But maybe also I haven't tried long or hard enough that way?

The one PAE exception for my computer could be pemasu's PAEs which seem to be free of this problem - again maybe I just haven't run his Pups long enough to crash the graphics? Hopefully he could give his ideas once he gets back from cross-country skiing.

Worryingly the latest non-PAE slacko has the problem as well as the earlier PAE slackos (I haven't tried the 5.4-PAE slacko).

Retros otherwise are all good so far, so I'm happy to use these for playing with the new Pups (e.g. posting from a trouble-free RetroPrecise-5.4.2 Full).

Seems to me all these black screen, messed up desktop GUI, graphics issues are related to the graphics driver being used.
Sure seems to cure the problems for me. If I use a graphics driver that likes my hardware and my hardware likes that driver.
All problems are cured and stuff just works.
Vesa driver seems to be good fallback option to at least get to usable GUI._________________I have found, in trying to help people, that the things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected

Bigpup, it's difficult for me to get a solid handle on whether or not the
issues I've had are driver related or not. I just tried to force Vesa on
Precise 5.4.2 PAE and it refuses to work. I tried with Racy 5.3.90 and
had success for a while. It accepted Vesa at only 640 X 480 even though
I had set 1024 X 768. After eight reboots with no black screens, I made
the mistake of trying Xorgwizard again and setting 1024 X 768. It no
longer accepted Vesa at all, and my only recourse was to let it run with
a (Intel) driver. The short run of 8 OK reboots using Vesa is very
suggestive that it's a driver problem but it's not conclusive. I had
intended to reboot 20 times or until a black screen.

I get the same report on two of my PCs, the IBM NetVista and the Dell
2350 that I've used for the above tests. I don't yet know how to compare
the Intel driver used on the latest Pups to the drivers used on earlier
Pups that work Ok for me.

If anyone can steer me to a older driver and instruct me on how to get
it properly installed on Precise 5.4.2 and maybe also Racy 5.3.90 I'd
certainly like to try it out.

In fact, I'd like to know how to compare the Intel driver Retro Precise
uses to the PAE one since Retro isn't a problem.

I've been trying to figure out how to change the wireless rt2500pci on
the new Pups back to the version that works for me on older Pups.
Wireless has also gone to pot for me on Pups using 3,X kernels
This is effort is mostly just my curiosity and desire to learn at work.

I also wonder if the "buggyness" I've experienced in general with the
latest Pups isn't suggestive of kernel problems.

puppy-precise no longer has any pets in any of the Categories. The file is blank. If you are going to update the Ubuntu repos skip the puppy-precise or copy it to another location before so you can move it back.

You will find the folder packages in root it is a hidden folder for those who do not know hit the eye to reveal the hidden folders.

Cheers

EDIT: Even with coping it and moving it back it will still not show any pets what so ever. So don't update the Puppy-precise repo file.

Concerning my "black screen" problems with PAE Precise 5.4.2, I was
able to fool the Pup and transplant a frugal from one machine to another.
The target machine is the one that would not start up Precise but it does
run the transplanted frugal. I had to fix sound, of course but it automatically
chose a "nv" driver and 1440 X 900. It generates error messages both
starting up and shutting down but otherwise it works well.

I did 15 hard reboots of the machine and Precise never black screened.
That's the first time I've ever seen Precise PAE go more than just a few
startups without a black screen. The hardware/driver report is:

VGA Controller: nVidia Corporation NV6[Vanta/Vanta LT]

So it does appear that the kind of black screens I've been seeing are
video driver (version) related. Retro apparently has more older driver
versions.

I have updated the PPM and since I did that guess what?
puppy-precise no longer has any pets in any of the Categories.

Barry has now fixed this. The file 'Packages-puppy-precise-official' at ibiblio.org was zero bytes. He has re-uploaded it and it will be picked up when PPM is updated.

However, there is further scope for confusion. PPM shows Desktop category by default and there are currently no Puppy-precise-official packages in this category so it is easy to assume that something is wrong with PPM. Click to other categories and the available packages appear._________________Classic Opera 12.16 browser SFS package for Precise, Slacko, Racy, Wary, Lucid, etc available here

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